A Memory, a Presence

I am a little late acknowledging the Urs (anniversary of the death of a great teacher) of my best friend and spiritual father, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan. Traditionally, the Urs is a celebration of the “wedding” of what the Hindus would call the maha-samadhi, a term I use simply because it popped up in my head, residue of my days in various Yogic groups in my twenties, while I was waiting for my teacher to find me. He found me pretty early, as it happens, because I was age sixteen when I first saw him, but it was awhile before I met him; and that is another story for another time. As to the maha-samadhi term, it is meant to describe the final, conscious departure of one from her or his body, with the accent on the word conscious. . . and although I wasn’t there when Pir, as most of us called him, left his body, my impression is that he made a pretty conscious exit, and I do know that he managed to visit many of his students as he departed, including me.

It has come to my deepest attention, lately, that teachers and the organizations that form around them become, ultimately, traps that keep the seeker from a full awakening, and I find myself in a conundrum, because I give my own acknowledged teacher the credit for saving my life and bringing me to God. He was a deeply flawed personality and vastly awakened soul who by his own admission made many mistakes, but never gave up. The only explanation I can give for these competing awarenesses of mine is that perhaps when one is younger–both spiritually and chronologically–the teacher-disciple relationship acts as a sort of jump-start to awakening, but ultimately may become a trap if the teacher fails to set the student free. My teacher never, in my experience, held onto his students or their understanding in any way.

The thing that Pir Vilayat gave his students that stands out most for me was that he made us aware that we could do anything we wanted to do. We trailed after him into numerous natural settings such as the French Alps and the New Mexican desert, and we read what his father, Inayat Khan, called the sacred manuscript of nature, often in the pouring rain or unbearably hot sun. I personally slept in a cold, wet sleeping bag in a flooded tent or nestled among boulders in excruciating pain. I wept the tears of understanding and of rage, and I made a complete fool of myself on many occasions. I will tell you a little story that is connected to the photo here, a very bad one from the era of disposable cameras, that depicts one of my finest moments as a fool, “the fool on the Hill” of Beatles fame.

For many years, Pir Vilayat held a multi-lingual alchemical retreat in the French Alps, way up past the treeline, a gathering in the hardest of physical conditions and the greatest natural beauty and majesty. It may have been about 1975, when I became determined to climb the mountain, become fully enlightened, and thus have no more pain in my life. I was married to my first husband at the time, but without a thought for him or anyone else, I somehow found the money to fly to Geneva and then take the train to Chamonix, and I struggled up the mountain with far too many personal possessions, material and immaterial both, and once there, I finagled and maneuvered and somehow got possession of THE RETREAT HUT, way up on the mountain where all the big shots had done their retreats…all the big guns who some of us believed could take us where we wanted to go (and that is yet another story). I don’t even remember who most of them were now, but it sure seemed like a big deal to me, age 24, that I was going to get to make my retreat in the footsteps of the great, sleeping on the same floor they’d slept on. So my plan was to climb up to that hut and stay there until I died to myself (that was a phrase we used a lot in those days), and then I, or so I assumed, would be a changed person and I would never be in pain again. Pir Vilayat said, when I announced this (in the picture above), “Well, I don’t think you’re quite ready.” That clipped Oxford accent… I was devastated.

I threw as much of a fit as I dared throw in his presence, but he wouldn’t give in and let me straggle up the mountain alone. He said I should go on his group retreat first, and then we’d see. The problem was, his retreat was on another mountain peak, way across the valley where the main camp was held. But I wasn’t about to give up possesion of that hut. It was a tiny, cinderblock shepherd’s hut, about a half hour’s climb from the main camp. I was determined to go up there and fast until I died and became reborn.

But he said I had to go on his (group) retreat first. So, with all my stereotypical ideas of obedience and dedication to the guru’s wishes, I got up at dawn on the first day of the group retreat and, fasting, I set out from my hut, and hiked down the mountain and across the valley. It took me about three hours; there was no path, and the way was mostly rocks, and I had no experience whatsoever at hiking in such a setting. Somewhere along the way, I turned my ankle, and from then on, I could barely walk. But I made it, feeling desperate at the prospect of getting back and forth for the next days. I sat and wept all the first morning of his retreat. We were in a setting of the most phenomenal beauty and majesty we could possible be in, but I wept from pain and egotism. When the group broke up, he casually asked me “so what’s the problem?” I wasn’t about to tell him I had a sprained ankle and the walk was too much for me, so I mumbled something about the “power of the process,” and he pretended to buy my excuse and I hobbled back to my hut.

What an ego trip.

So this went on for about three days, and on the third day, when I got back to my hut, I felt desperate. In addition to a sprained ankle, I was not in good physical shape. I just didn’t know how I’d ever be able to do it. I lay down on my sleeping bag on the cement floor (I spent the nights listening for the air to hiss out of my air mattress so I could get up and blow it up again), and later in the afternoon, I heard pounding, and voices on that lonely mountaintop where I was in residence. Down the slope, just in front of my hut, what looked like a large tent, of the circus variety that was always associated with his group retreats in nature, was being pitched. I broke the traditional silence and asked one of the guys working there what was going on, and he told me something about how Pir Vilayat had decided they’d better move the group retreat over to there, because of some problem that didn’t sound like it had much to do with my predicament. I’ll never really know why that retreat was moved over to “my” mountain.

Next morning, and the next, I hobbled down the slope and attended his retreat. I could have died of happiness, it was so easy. Now I could really focus on the work at hand. Two days after that, when the group retreat broke up for that day, I was about to get up and go back to my hut. I was feeling peaceful and accepting of the entire process by then, and it helped a lot that I was in less physical pain. Suddenly, I sensed a presence. I opened my eyes and there was THAT ROBE in front of me, the traditional dervish robe that he always wore. He said to me, “You can just go and be free now, you don’t have to come to the group retreat.” It took me a moment to take that in.

“With your approval?” I asked him.

“Yes.”

In those days, of course, before the alchemical retreat system he developed, a Sufi retreat consisted pretty much of just repeating dhikr thousands of times a day. I believe the prescription, then, was about fourteen thousand, if possible.

So I limped back to my hut and stayed up there for about ten days, and I’m sure I made a very bad retreat, but I stayed there in that glorious setting and said dhikr, and while it was mostly hard and very inexpert work, there were a few sublime moments. There were a few terrifying ones, too: the hut had a glass-windowed door, and one night I woke up to find a very strange-looking man staring in the window at me. I was petrified. There were a lot of tourists going through there, but he was a very odd-looking one. Later, a friend told me that there was this “weird guy” walking around the mountains, and they were worried about me. But I was fine. I saw him a few times, but I felt protected. I called on Pir when I was afraid, and I felt that he was with me.

So that was my first retreat, and that’s what is taking place in that picture up there. Suffice it to say I did not die to myself, become enlightened, or solve all my problems on that retreat, but it was glorious, nevertheless. After I went down, I attended group activities, sacred dances, etc., but mostly I sat on the side of the mountain and wept.

For those who are interested in the retreat process, I read an article about retreats recently, and I thought it described the process rather well, although mostly in terms of American Buddhist retreats. If you would like to read it, go here: http://www.tricycle.com/blog/5-things-about-meditation-retreats-might-surprise-you.

Full moon, where will you be going from here?

“Into a retreat.”

Why do you take a retreat after fullness?

“To make myself an empty vessel in order to be filled again.” Inayat Khan

He was my best friend, my father, the one who picked me up and made me fall so that I could learn to pick myself up again. He took me to the heights, and he helped me explore my own depths. He is still here, and I love him so. May he be eternally blessed.

Enjoyed reading this and remembering… Glad you can see the flaws in your teacher and love him more because of them. It shows the depth of a heart that any teacher would be glad to live inside of. Happy Father’s Day to David.

If your kids still want to spend Father’s Day with you, you did something right! Em flew to Kansas for an interview. Puget Sound fell through, but if this one doesn’t, she’ll start out making more than her father does presently!

Harnessing the Energies of Love

Some day, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. Then for the second time in the history of the world, we will have discovered fire.
― Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The Resurrection

The resurrection is a description of how the universe self-corrects, life always reasserting itself even when forces of death and darkness have temporarily prevailed. Like a tiny flower growing through cracks in broken cement, peace of mind emerging at last after periods of deep grief, or people continuing to fall in love despite the ravages of war, love always gets the final say. To lean on the resurrection is simply to recognize what’s true; that if happiness hasn’t arrived yet, then the story isn’t over.

Marianne Williamson, The Alchemy of Easter

Listening to the Muse

Just as anyone who listens to the muse will hear, you can write out of your own intention or out of inspiration. There is such a thing. It comes up and talks. And those who have heard deeply the rhythms and hymns of the gods, the words of the gods, can recite those hymns in such a way that the gods will be attracted. -- Joseph Campbell, The Hero's Journey, p.124

The Children of Sorrow…

Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because he cannot be at home in it, because he is out of place in it, and yet he must be in it, his place is with those others for whom there is no room. His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world. - Thomas Merton

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The dead let go, floating out of their graves, dressed for a wedding. - Charlie Hopkins

Necessary Loneliness

"Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away... and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.... be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.... and don't expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it."
— Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)

Setting the World on Fire

"In the absence of a higher ideal the constant striving after material inventions has led man to such devices as have set the world on fire." --Inayat Khan

Also There

All things
are too small
to hold me,
I am so vast

In the Infinite
I reach
for the Uncreated

I have
touched it,
it undoes me
wider than wide

Everything else
is too narrow

You know this well,
you who are also there
–Hadewijch (13th Century)

About the Rays

If you have visited this blog before and are confused that not only has the domain name changed, so has the title, you know that it was called "Footprints" after the Zen Oxherding poems for quite awhile. The poems are still here (see above).
As to the new title, a long time ago, one of the students of Hazrat (Saint) Inayat Khan, named Kismet Stam, published a book with exactly the same title I have decided to use here. It was a beautiful book and has long been out of print, which is why I feel comfortable using it, and why it is meant as a sort of tribute: Rays, pages in the life of a Sufi. To the Sufi, each of us is a ray of light shooting out from the central Sun that is God. This is the expression of this ray.

Crowned with the Stars

"You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself flows in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you." --Thomas Traherne

SIX

The valley spirit never dies;
It is the woman, primal mother.
Her gateway is the root of heaven and earth.
It is like a veil barely seen.
Use it; it will never fail. - Tao te Ching

DWELLING

I have nothing in my home that I do not find to be useful nor know to be beautiful. --William Morris

The True Invincibles

When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. --Gandhi

My Father and Best Friend: Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

Hazrat Pir-O-Murshid Inayat Khan

By my dear friend Gregory Blann

Who does the typing?

I've been a student of the Sufi teacher Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan for over 35 years. I have been his representative and an instructor of meditation and comparative religion during much of that time. I guide people seeking a contemplative path, in both individual meditative practice and alchemical retreats.
I am a psychotherapist and a teacher of psychology, focusing on the cllinical, depth and transpersonal theories of psychology. I have a Master's Degree in Existential Phenomenology and am "ABD" for my Ph.D. in Transpersonal Psychology. I am currently open to working with clients under the appropriate circumstances. Email me if you think we could work together in a collaborative fashion. I'll do what I can to help you go where you want to go.

God is in the Machine

With gratitude to the succession of my many and dearly-loved Macs through the years. Writers like to thank pivotal people in their lives who inspired them and helped them to become who they are. I have a long list of those too, but it was the Macintosh computer that set me free: it thinks as fast as I do, it thinks LIKE I do, and it has Soul. And I can listen to Krishna Das while I work on my writing, edit photographs or do creative work. I don’t do Windows. http://www.apple.com/

The Origin of the Footprints

I am following a Sufi path, in the International Sufi Order of Pir-o-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan. You will notice many quotes from his writings here, and from those of his successor and my own Pir (teacher), Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan. The most important thing that Sufism has given me has been complete spiritual freedom, which is why you will read many other quotes here, and my explorations of other paths, other philosophies. The Sufi, Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan said, has two points of view: his own, and that of the other. It is my inherent conviction that, as all rivers lead to the sea, all paths lead to the one goal most sacred to the heart. In our Sufi Order, we call this the Message: “the Message is a call to Awakening for all those meant to awaken, and a lullabye for those who are still meant to sleep.” –Inayat Khan

Of course, he himself would say that we are all awake, just as we are all, in different degrees, partially asleep! But each condition is temporary and meaningful: “I have come here not to teach you that which you do not know, but to awaken in you that which has always been your knowledge.” –Inayat Khan